Watching in Horror as the Russians Destroy Themselves (Again)

In 1999, the year before Vladimir Putin ascended to the Russian presidency and the final year of rule by Boris Yeltsin, the Russian economy snapped out of its doldrums and posted impressive growth of 6.4%. The next year, before Putin’s policies could possibly have had any effect, it soared to 10%.

It’s an absolute lie that the Putin economy then took flight and saved Russia from the ravages of Yeltsin. Under Putin, the average rate of GDP growth has been just 5.1%, considerably less than what Russia enjoyed inYeltsin’s final year, and as Anders Aslund points out in the Moscow Times Putin isn’t responsible for the growth that occurred on his watch. That growth began under Yeltsin, not Putin, and it was the result of rising world oil prices due to a global economic boom. In the period when Russia’s GDP growth spiked under Putin, 2003-2007, the price of a barrel of crude oil doubled, from $30 per barrel to $60 per barrel. Nothing remotely that dramatic happened under Yeltsin. In 2009, when the Russian economy collapsed, the price oil fell by half, from $100/barrel to $50/barrel.

When oil prices tumbled in 2009 due to a global economic downturn, Russia saw a massive recession in which GDP constricted by a whopping 7.5%. As shown in the graph above, in 2001, the first year when Putin’s policies could credibly be said to have come into force, economic growth fell dramatically. It wasn’t until 2003, when the price of oil soared upwards, that growth exceeded Yeltsin’s 1999 pace, and in only four of Putin’s 12 years in power so far has it done so. In ever other year, Putin’s economy lagged behind Yeltsin’s benchmark, sometimes dramatically so. Russia’s current GDP growth rate is half what it was at the end of Yeltsin’s rule.

Even if you delete 2009 from Putin’s record and consider only the other years, Putin’s average rate of economic growth is just 6.2% per year, still clearly less than what Yeltsin achieved ten years earlier. As the chart indicates, seven times during the Putin years economic growth has fallen from year to year, while only five times has it risen from year to year.

But you can’t take away 2009. In that year, Russia paid the price for ten years of rule in which Putin failed to ween the nation off its dependence on crude oil and engaged in profligate waste of Russian resources by restarting the cold war and initiating a massive military buildup.

Russia is being egregiously harmed by the rule of Vladimir Putin, not helped. Under Putin, economic growth has been minimized rather than maximized, and the chance to alter Russia’s future has been squandered rather than exploited.

Since 2009, Russian economic growth has never exceeded 4.5% It fell dramatically in 2012 compared to 2011, and it has fallen again the first two quarters of 2013. As we’ve previously reported, even officials of the Putin administration itself now admit Russia is mired in yet another recession.

And all of this is perfectly predictable. Putin is not an economist or businessman, he is a proud career KGB spy. He knows nothing about how to run an economy or a business, he was educated in the Soviet Union and taught only how to hate, lie and destroy.

Another example of you comrade F5_Twister of the TRUTH, of vomiting pure soviet trash.

Yes, sure Yeltsin was an alcoholic, but at least he surrounded himself with competent RUSSIAN economists that had been educated and trained in the west. Hence his success at running the Russian economy.

But as your beloved Putin was only a KGB stooge, what did he learn there, only how to lie, steal, fool old fools, not to forget how to beat up defenceles old folks and undermine Yeltsin’s authority to grasp the top position in Russia.

And what has he, your beloved Putin, achieved in that time? Become the riches man in Russia, sired a bastard, and had heaps of reporters – that had the audacity to write the truth about him murdered – not to overlook the rigged elections in getting himself re-elected to the top job. Shedding those crocodile tears as a “thank you” to the Russian sheep that voted for him at the last rigged election?

Ooh, you are sick if you sincerely believe the crap you vomit verbally.

Uh, no. Putin didn’t become prime minister until August 1999. Even if he’d been PM on January 1, 1999 (he was at KGB then), the policies that affected economic performance in 1999 weren’t made in 1999, they were made years before that. Similarly, Putin’s policies from 2000 didn’t take effect until much later, and look how the growth figures nosedive at that point!

What you are saying about Yeltsin is just Putin’s propaganda, which he used to justify his massive neo-Soviet crackdown. But the facts show the economic upturn had started happening long before Putin began turning Russia back into the USSR. And had he not done so, impairing Russian performance, the country’s economy might lead the world today.

But I’m not just reciting Putin’s propaganda. What I’m saying about Yeltsin is obvious from multiple videos of that time. Hey, he couldn’t even speak clearly or walk straight and he had been doing awkward things and babbling nonsense all the time making people laugh their guts out. I still don’t believe that Yeltsin himself orchestrated all those efforts that resulted in the unusual economic growth. I’m just wondering who the Gray Eminence behind the throne was?

I don’t remember his name, however he was a small fatty man with the round face like a full moon. Still he’s screwed lots of things up.
His guru was an American quasi economist and super cretin Jefrey Sachs if I remember well that nasty charlatan.
Sachs was idiotic enough to hallucinate that immediately after having imposed the so called “market economy” in the country whose “economy” was based on a slave or semi-slave labour “Wirtschaftwunder” would occur.
If they hired Sarah Palin who at that time was just only a young woman and a mayor of small city of Wasilla in Alaska but was equipped with the brain like a supercomputer, Russia would flourish like Alaska is doing today.
Or rather she should be hired as a chief executive of KANGAROOSTAN; Her talents would be much better utylised here.

> And all of this is perfectly predictable. Putin is not an economist or businessman, he is a proud career KGB spy. He knows nothing about how to run an economy or a business, he was educated in the Soviet Union

Unlike Yeltsin, who was a great economist and was NOT educated in the Soviet Union.

Once again, you embarrass yourself. Unlike Putin, Yeltsin made no claim of being an economic genius and was not shy about asking the best and brightest minds from the West to assist him in building Russia’s economy. And his policies bore fruit, with explosive growth beginning long before Putin, as the data clearly shows.

Your data, little Kim, which is very different from reality. How did the brightest minds of the West assist Yeltsin with Russia’s economy? By buying up stolen goods, markets, and making business contracts (still active today) with Yeltsin’s thieves providing them all the assets they needed to enrich themselves while Russians froze and starved.

Dear Rottensmell, tell us, what is so proud in being an operative of the most notorious, brutal, genocidal, barbaric, treasonous, inhuman, dirty terrorist organisation in the history of humanity with the blood of at least twenty million people on its claws?
Because PUTLER is obviously very proud of his CzK, NKVD, KGB roots, he must ba also proud of being a formal litter of VASILIJ BLOKHIN, the Chief Executioner of the Polish officers in Katyn.
By his own account, Blokhin has personally murdered some 50 000 people and that makes him the biggest killer in the history of humanity – a true Hero of USRR.
I wonder whether PUTLER is secretly making yearly pilgrimages to Blokhin’s grave and dreaming about having someone like Blokhin in his service today.
Or maybe not. After all PUTLER didn’t need Blokhin to incinerate the entire Polish civilian and military leadership at Smolensk.

It is amazing to watch Rotten Booger, a neo-nazi of the Jewish
Jirinovski breed call himself a “Libertarian”…he cuss Pooty-Poot from one corner of his mouth then praise him from the other corner. Same as the nazi vanguard of the Muslim conquest in Europe and the USA…the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood have also dumped “socialism” from their idiotic creed and call Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan the Saints of the Satanic cult….THE MOUNTAINS OF MONEY WE GAVE THE MUSLIM SAND MONKEYS AT WORK!

Ha! Gimme a break! The Yeltsin years, Russia was an economic and military basket case. While under Putin the gap between the 1% and 99% is as great as its ever been, but he did strengthen Russia’s economy and military which Yeltsin couldn’t do to save his life. Through thievery and corruption no doubt, but it was accomplished.